If you're new to SEO, you might wonder what keywords are and why they are so important. This post covers all you need to know about keywords and how they can help increase your search visibility. You will also learn about the different ways to add keywords to your website and how to find the search terms that your target audience uses.
What are keywords?
Keywords are single words or phrases that users type into search engines to find their answers. They are a connection point between user queries and websites. Keywords help your website rank and provide answers to questions that people are asking at the same time.
Website owners use keywords in their SEO strategy to increase search visibility and website traffic. Understanding what keywords are and how to use them effectively is critical for your SEO success.
Why are keywords important for SEO?
Keywords are one of the most critical parts of SEO. They are a vital ranking factor as keywords help communicate to search engines what your website is about and what relevant topics your content covers. Using keywords sends a strong signal to search engines that your content is a suitable match for a given query.
By understanding what keywords your target audience uses to search, you can create helpful content they will love. Basically, what it means is that when your site is well optimized, it speaks the native language of your potential customers.
Where to add your keywords?
There are many places where you can use keywords on your website. However, you don't want to overload your web pages with them.
At the beginning, it might be tempting to stuff your keywords and key phrases everywhere in your content to trick search engines into ranking it higher. This will more likely harm your search visibility rather than increase it.
Instead, consider adding keywords where they fit naturally. There are also other important areas to consider when adding keywords to improve your SEO efforts.
- Title tags
- Meta descriptions
- Headings and subheading
- URLs
- Anchor text
- Images (ALT text)
- Product categories and descriptions
MM TIP: Learn more about on-page SEO and using keywords in our guide.
How to find keywords?
Now, when you understand what a keyword is, it's time to learn how to find the search terms that your audience enters into search engines. This information will help you with your SEO strategy to create content for the right keywords. Keyword research will also help you understand how people ask for more information on your business's relevant topics when using a search engine.
Like any other SEO activity, keyword research includes a number of steps. Before you start looking for new keywords, check your analytics software to identify search phrases that people are using to arrive at your website.
- Identify and collect keywords
- Find new keyword suggestions
- Discover competitor keywords
- Remove duplicate keywords
- Keyword categorization
- Analyze keyword data
- Identify preferred landing pages
MM TIP: Read our complete keyword research guide that explains everything you need to know to get started.
What is keyword search volume?
The search volume indicates how often people are searching for a specific keyword. It is usually calculated by taking an average search volume over the past twelve months. Search volume is a valuable metric for SEO as it provides marketers with a general idea of how popular a term is.
The vast majority of SEO tools pull their data directly from Google Keyword Planner. They tend to cluster keywords into groups so it often happens that search volumes aren't very accurate. Marketing Miner pulls data directly from Google Ads and historical clickstream data to ungroup such keyword clusters and provide more precise search volume values.
For example, the keyword “markting” gets around 900 searches per month (on average). However, Google Keyword Planner groups this term together with the “marketing” keyword, so you can't find accurate information for your keyword research.
MM TIP: You can read more about keyword search volume and Marketing Miner data in this article: https://help.marketingminer.com/en/article/keyword-search-volume/
Check search volume of your keywords in Marketing Miner now:
Long-tail keywords
You may have also heard about long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are much more specific in their nature. They typically have relatively low search volume and tend to be at least three words long. They help you attract qualified traffic with very specific search intent. These phrases are valuable to rank for as they often have a higher conversion value.
Conclusion
Using keywords effectively on your website is the most important part of SEO. They help your website rank higher and provide answers to questions of your audience too. You mainly want to use relevant keywords to what your audience is searching for so they have a better chance of finding your content in the search results.
